On the evening of July 7, a group of local artists and admirers gathered on the floor of ARTspace, the local gallery in downtown Hollister, to celebrate the featured show titled “Through Our Eyes,” the first all-photography exhibition that the space has hosted. ARTspace is an extension of the San Benito County Arts Council, which was incorporated in 2006. The show, which runs through July 30 and charges no admission, features the works of 11 local photographers, whose work covered a wide variety of subjects: landscapes, portraits, stills of children at rest and at play, and fantastical visualizations of theatrical characters — all on display on the gallery’s walls.
BenitoLink spoke with Jennifer Laine, executive director of the San Benito County Arts Council, about the uniqueness of the photo-based show. “This show came together by working closely with one of our teaching artists, Stephanie Skow, who teaches a lot of our visual arts classes and after school arts programs but is,” said Laine. “But she is, by profession, a professional photographer. So we started talking and brainstorming with her, and basically gave her free reign to curate this show because she’s connected to so many emerging and working professional photographers in the community. So she put the call out, and got some really great submissions, so we went with that. She did a great job, from curating the show, putting it together, and networking within the artists’ community.”
Speaking about her participation in curating the show’s other contributing artists, Skow reiterates Laine’s excitement for local talent. “I’m part of the Hollister’s Photographer’s Club,” Skow explained, “so as soon as [the Arts Council] asked be to do this show, I immediately had in my head the names of everyone in this room, and i just thought ‘oh my gosh, that it would be great, because there’s so many great photographers in town.’ I reached out on the [Photographer’s Club] page, and asked ‘how many of you would be interested in putting your your art put into a show this summer?’ The result is sort of what you see here.”
Stephanie Skow, who had her own works on display in the exhibit, helped to curate the “Through Our Eyes” collection of photos. She and her husband, Dane, each have a small collection of photographs placed next to each other on one wall of the gallery. Their series of portraits depicts emotional close-ups of children’s hands and bodies living out their daily routines inside the walls of the New Life for the Poor, a children’s orphanage in Haiti where the photos were taken. “My husband’s family has been a part of it for 10 years,” Skow explained. “My mother-in-law and father-in-law helped purchase the land for the orphanage. There were kids all over Haiti that needed it. The whole orphanage was finished last year, and the first building was dedicated to my father-in-law, Don Skow, who passed away three years ago. Other members of my family were able to go [back to Haiti] last year for the dedication, and my husband and I went back this past October for our son’s first birthday in heaven. He passed away shortly after birth. We wanted to do something to celebrate in his honor and we thought, ‘what better way than to celebrate with these babies?’”
Another of the collection’s photographers, Marisa Duran, spoke about her own photography, which have a light-hearted tone, featuring colorful props and whimsical poses. “I was a preschool teacher for a while, and with preschool kids you often try to document your learning,” Duran said. “In my photography, I often try to capture the most important moment or the most important thing they’re learning. I really like that with kids they are really in the moment – oftentimes with adults, they’re very self-conscious in front of the camera. Kids really keep you in the moment. I really like taking pictures of moments or things that are fun, and that inspire happiness.”
Laine also spoke about the newness of the exhibit. “This is the first photography show we’ve done,” she said. “We do between five and six exhibitions a year, and some of those are our regular exhibitions. We always do open studios in the spring, and a high school art exhibit in late winter. We have some wiggle room a few times a year where we get together to come up with a themed exhibition. Sometimes that’s driven by the medium – like how this one was based around photography. We’ve done a landscape and cityscape show, a materiality show where we focused on the different materials of metal, glass, and clay. Last year, we did a Hollister-made exhibition that had a more urban approach; we had a graffiti artist, a tattoo artist, and a textile artist contribute work to that show.
“Up next we’ll do an exhibit with the Aromas Hills Artisans. They’re a really active collection of artists based in Aromas and San Juan. That show will be mixed medium, so we’ll have everything from sculpture and textiles, to oil painting, etc. That show will come in the fall, and then we’re planning on doing something for Dia de los Muertos, getting into the holiday season. Around the holidays, we’ve traditionally done our children’s art exhibition, in which pre-k students make collaborative works of art. We generally work with about nine local preschools, and the upcoming children’s show will be our fifth annual.”
Laine said she considered the gallery’s first-ever photography show to be a success.
“We got a great turnout, the artwork is very diverse, so we would love to do [another photography show] in the future,” she said.
For more information about ARTspace and the San Benito County Arts Council, visit its website.
Here is a list of the photographers whose work is featured in the exhibition:
- John Chadwell
- Robert Connolly
- Marisa Duran
- Kelly Hacker
- Janelle Nichole
- Rene Rodriguez
- Dane Skow
- Stephanie Skow
- Lisa Robinson-Ward
- Alec Ward
- Michelle West